


Orion, Fearless and Bold

by dridri93



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Lack of Communication, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 19:22:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6766693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dridri93/pseuds/dridri93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean’s been throwing himself in front of Sam (ostensibly to “protect him”) for years. But normally, they’d been able to talk it out and Dean would stop for a while, letting Sam protect himself for a change. This time, Dean won’t even talk with him; he keeps trying to distract him. When a vampire hunt with a time limit comes up in North Dakota, Sam has to deal not only with a vampire, but a brother who doesn’t hesitate before putting himself directly in the line of fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orion, Fearless and Bold

**Author's Note:**

> I managed to snag [kuwlshadow's](http://kuwlshadow.livejournal.com) art for the Wincest Reverse Bang! Seriously, go check it out - [LJ](http://kuwlshadow.livejournal.com/28844.html) and [Tumblr](http://kuwlshadow.tumblr.com/post/143977507613/orion-fearless-and-bold-is-written-by-sxviorsam)! So many thanks to her for not only making the first piece that caught my eye, but making the banner for this!

Everything had been going downhill for a while. Sam couldn’t pin point exactly when it had started, but he knew it was going to implode on them soon. They’d been away from the Bunker hunting for a couple weeks, and each hunt had gone worse and worse.

The worst part was that Dean refused to acknowledge that there was a problem. As if it was his God-given duty to lay his life on the line to protect his brother, who was damn well able to protect himself.

Sometimes Sam wondered whether he saw Sammy the kid or _Sam_ when he looked at him.

It didn’t help that, in trying to avoid the problem, Dean tried to distract him. With sex. Because _that_ was healthy.

Sam loved the idiot, but sometimes he wanted to bash his head in. And sometimes he wanted to kiss him senseless, especially when Dean gave him that _look_ with the lip and the smolder and the lowered eyelids. But he wouldn’t, because that would be letting Dean win, and letting Dean distract him from what he was trying to say, and Sam wasn’t going to let that happen.

“ _Dean_ , stop … just stop!” he hissed. Dean just stared harder, if that was possible. It had started to get ridiculous, but if Sam laughed then Dean would pout. That was, honestly, worse than the smolder his brother was currently wearing when it came to distracting Sam.

Finally, it looked like Dean gave up. Sam relaxed and went back to surfing on his laptop, sure that now he would get some peace and quiet. Nope. Not going to happen. Dean flicked on the TV, found the only pay-per-view the sticks of Iowa offered, and turned up the volume.

Sam rolled his eyes and tried to focus on the screen – he may have found a pattern. Dean ruined his focus, though, by dropping himself onto Sam’s lap. And mimicking the porn dialogue into Sam’s ear.

“Oh, screw you, asshole,” Sam growled, shoving him away before grabbing the laptop and trying to move away.

Dean grinned and followed him, grinning widely. “C’mon, Sammy,” he said huskily. “It’s been, what, a week? I’m gettin’ kinda lonely.”

Sam rolled his eyes. As if. Just because he refused to have _sex_ didn’t mean they didn’t do anything else. His bottom lip still hurt from where Dean had bitten it the day before during one of their heavier makeout sessions in the back of the Impala. “Dean,” he said, “Stop, okay?”

Sam watched Dean’s face fall, and almost regretted turning him down. He missed it too, to be honest. But he wasn’t going to let Dean use his usual coping methods this time. It always seemed to happen, and it always seemed to blow up in their faces later. “Look, Dean,” he began, and watched Dean’s face shutter. “Seriously. I know you just want to protect me, but–”

“–Hey, so you were looking pretty focused on that laptop,” Dean interrupted, eyes shifting to the side. He turned back to face Sam, and his eyes were already back to teasing. “So…you watching porn without me, or did you find us a hunt? I’m gettin’ bored, here, Sammy. And you know what I’m like when I’m bored.” Dean leered at him, and Sam huffed. Way to cut him off, Dean, seriously. Not even subtle anymore.

But he had actually found a hunt. Which actually took precedence over Dean’s stubbornness, because this time they only had a few days to figure out what was killing people, if the pattern held. “You’re the one who watches porn on _my_ laptop, dude. But yeah, I found a hunt.”

And just like that, Dean stopped fucking around. The teasing look went out of his eyes, replaced by the hardened hunter. Sam could tell Dean was waiting for more information, so he continued. “I got lucky that I found it at all. Even the FBI hasn’t figured out the pattern yet.”

Dean interrupted, “Pattern? So you’re saying we’re on a timetable, here?” Sam nodded. “Explain it in the car, then, Sasquatch, and tell me where we’re going. If this one is anything like that werewolf in Idaho, we don’t have time to sit with our thumbs up our asses.”

Sam nodded, remembering that hunt. They’d almost lost the wolf because they’d taken too long in getting there. The only thing that went their way was the werewolf, fully wolfed out, springing out in front of the car. Dean had plowed it over with the Impala, apologizing to the car the whole way, and then they pumped the werewolf full of silver while it was trying to recover. He came back to the present and grabbed his laptop, the charger, and his duffel, following Dean out to the Impala. Dean left the key on the bed, not even bothering to check out.

Dean slid into the driver’s seat and asked, “Where am I going?”

“North Dakota,” Sam answered, already reopening his laptop and trying to map out the pattern on a notepad in his lap. “I’ll be more specific once we’re closer. Just get us there fast. The latest vic disappeared yesterday, and according to the pattern I’m seeing, we have a week before she turns up drained dry, a county away from where she was grabbed.”

Dean gunned the Impala and they squealed out of the parking lot. “Vampires?” he asked.

“I think so,” Sam said. “But something’s up. There’s not a big enough body trail for a large group.”

Dean thought on that, and came to the same conclusion Sam had. “So…vam _pire_ then.” Sam nodded absently, noting the point every victim so far – only four, but this had the potential to have crossed state lines – had been grabbed, and where their bodies had been dumped. Every time, they were at least a county away, if not two or three.

He was amazed the FBI hadn’t picked up on this. This had every marker of a human serial killer, if a _human_ serial killer ripped out the victim’s throats with their teeth and drained them dry.

The victims, at first glance, didn’t seem related, which may have been why the FBI weren’t alerted. The only thing they had in common, from the reports Sam was digging up, was that they had all been out walking late at night.

“Head north,” Sam said. “The rough path this thing is taking is due north, toward Canada.”

“Huh,” Dean said, already scanning for the road signs he’d need. “Maybe it pissed off its buddies and is making a run for Canada?”

“Maybe,” Sam said, looking at the state map from the Yellow Pages. (Sometimes it was damn hard to find a map with every small town on it, especially for those states no one really wanted to visit.) It was times like this that he thanked every benevolent deity he knew that he’d invested in a USB stick that gave him free WiFi wherever there was cell phone coverage. “When you see I-29, jump on it,” he noted. “That’ll get us most of the way there.”

“Most of the way where, dude?” Dean asked.

“Gilby, North Dakota,” Sam replied. “We’re going way out in the sticks, so don’t expect a ton of motels. This place has – shit – 237 people as of 2010.”

“Dude,” Dean said, “This is probably the most excitement that town’s had for years.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Sam let the silence fall, broken only by the Impala’s grumble as Dean pulled onto the highway and accelerated. At that speed, going from what Sam could see on the map, they’d be in Gilby in eight hours.

He turned back to his laptop and tried to figure out where the vamp was keeping the vic this time.

Within two hours of stony silence on Dean’s side – apparently he’d decided that conversation invited Sam to try and _talk_ about things – Sam was fading fast. He mumbled something like, “Wake me if you need a nap,” and dozed off.

He woke up with a huge crick in his neck, a dead laptop, and Dean walking back to the car, swinging a key around his finger. “Wakey-wakey, Sleeping Ugly,” Dean teased. “I got us a room at the, uh, _Sleep Rite Motel_. The only one in town. Going by the way the guy smelled, I’m wondering if we’d be better off sleeping in the car.”

Sam groaned. Just what he needed. A shitty motel bed and a sore back, or another couple of hours in the car and a bigger crick in his neck. What a choice. “Let’s just try the motel,” he huffed, trying to unfold himself from the car and grimacing as his knees popped. “It’s paid for.”

“If you say so, Sammy,” Dean said dubiously. “If the beds smell like last week’s jizz, I call the backseat.”

They walked into the room, sniffed, and walked right back out. “Jerk,” Sam grumbled as he situated himself between the dash and the seat, trying to avoid jabbing himself in the junk with the gearshift.

“I told you so, bitch,” Dean replied smugly, sighing as he laid back. “It’s not like you can’t come back here with me…”

Sam rolled his eyes and scoffed. “C’mon, Dean, you know we both can’t fit back there anymore.”

Dean sat up and rested his chin on the front seat. He leered, “If I’m on top of you, we’d fit great. I mean, remember last month? In Nebraska? We fit pretty damn well back here.”

Sam shifted, trying _not_ to remember. He couldn’t buckle; he knew this game. When he caved, Dean would take it as a win and then Sam would never be able to bring up Dean’s overprotectiveness again. “I guess we did,” he allowed, “but man, my back was all fucked up that next morning.”

Dean tilted his head, and Sam could feel Dean’s eyes rake over him. “If you’d told me, I could’ve given you a backrub.”

Sam shrugged and rolled over, narrowly missing the gearshift (again). “Look, man, that was in the past. And hell yeah, it was fun. It was hot. But not tonight, okay?”

Dean sighed. “Whatever, Sammy. Fine.” Sam listened for the creak of the leather backseat and Dean’s heavy sigh as he settled before relaxing and trying to sleep.

Five hours later, Sam’s back was sorer than ever and he’d actually caught maybe two hours of sleep. Dean wasn’t looking much better, but he at least didn’t look like a zombie.

Sam really didn’t want to go back into the room, but he desperately needed a shower. He found the two-dollar flip flops he’d bought for just that reason and gingerly stepped around stains and spots in the carpet. He set his duffel on the counter and wished that he could unsee the shower floor.

At least the water was hot, even if it stunk of chlorine and metal. He let it run for a minute to wash down some of the … _things_ that he’d seen on the floor before stepping in. He took one of the fastest showers he remembered taking, just getting clean and getting out.

He let his hair drip-dry, barely trusting the towels to be clean enough to dry his body. He came out of the room with what must have been a hilarious face, because Dean laughed before asking, “That bad, huh?”

“Dean, I didn’t even trust the _towels_ ,” he stressed. Dean’s face contorted.

“That’s just disgusting, man.”

When Dean stepped out of the room, dripping water onto his overshirt, he grimaced. “You…were so right, Sammy. That was…that was bottom five, right there.” It said something that Sam agreed, because they’d stayed in some supremely _disgusting_ motel rooms before.

Dean settled back into the driver’s seat, putting the keys in the ignition but not starting the car. “It’s a good thing the police files are digitized,” Sam said, looking down at the laptop he’d left charging in the room (warily). “No need for the Fed suits. The vic, Cecily Watters, didn’t get taken from here. She got grabbed at Grand Forks, but some friends of hers, who she was going to visit, noticed a panel van passing in front of their house. The van is stolen, of course.”

“Of course,” Dean said. “When isn’t it?”

Sam snorted. “Yeah. Anyway, stolen panel van. They found it just outside of Honeyford, just south of here, with no one inside and only Watters’ DNA in it. The Grand Forks’ PD’s K-9s followed the scent north a little ways, but lost it in a creek. They found her blood-covered jacket just upstream and gave up the search. Now they’re doing a search for the body in that general area.”

“But you think the vamp ditched her jacket and kept the girl.”

“Yeah. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It knew the cops were on its trail this time, probably heard it on the radio. So it tried to throw them off Cecily’s scent. If we don’t get to her before the vamp finishes whatever the hell he does, then her body will be dumped at the edge of town.”

“Huh. How long do we have now?” Dean asked.

“Well, she was grabbed two days ago. The body is dumped a week after the vic is grabbed, and the vic has normally, although not always, been dead for at least 24 hours.”

Dean did the math. “So we have two days to get to her before it’s probably too late.”

Sam nodded. “If we want to be safe and get to her before she’s too weak from blood loss to be moved, yeah, probably.”

Dean leaned in and looked at the map Sam had pulled up. “So where are you thinking the vamp is hiding?”

Sam sighed and shook his head. “That’s the thing: I don’t know. I can’t find any registries of old houses out here, and no one wants to buy a house in this town so there’s no listings of empty houses. I’m guessing the vamp is squatting somewhere outside of town, just to avoid suspicion, but I have no idea in which direction.”

Dean leaned back and groaned. “Well, shit. What the hell do we do now? Drive in circles around bumfuck, North Dakota?”

Sam sighed and nodded. “That’s really the only thing we can do at this point. Either that or we wait at a likely drop point–” Dean glared, and Sam dropped it. Really, he hadn’t considered it in the first place, but it’s not like they had many other options.

Dean growled and dropped his head onto the steering wheel. “Shit. Fuck. Why is this out luck.” Sam grimaced but didn’t say anything. They both knew that there wasn’t a good answer to that question. (Although he did flash back to those mirrors on that Bloody Mary case…who knows, maybe superstition held out for one in a really shitty way.) Dean groaned and cranked the engine, letting the Impala’s purr wash over them. “Looks like we’re cruising on backroads, Sammy,” he sighed.

Sam absently hummed in agreement, pulling up Google Earth to see if he could point them in any direction. He started scanning a fifty square mile area around Gilby for abandoned-looking ranch houses and barns, although he knew the panel van was way too recent for it to show up on these pictures.

They’d been driving around for all of six hours when Dean pulled the Impala off the road next to a worn-down gate. “Dean?” Sam asked, looking around and not even seeing a house.

“Just look, Sam,” Dean said, already opening the door. Sam got out and actually looked and realized that Dean was right: the gate looked like it’d been abandoned for years, if not decades: the metal was rusted to pieces, the wood rotting out, and the barbed wire had been cut so much that it was ineffectual. Even so, a set of shallow tire tracks were dug into the drive. He hurried back to his laptop to check for any houses in that area before he realized that Dean had already hopped the fence and started walking.

“Dean! Just wait…goddammit, Dean!” he exclaimed quietly. He didn’t like how empty it was out here. It felt like everything was listening, and that any noise he made would carry for miles. Hell, it probably could if he was loud enough; the day was still and the land rather flat, just dotted with trees along fencelines. Huffing in irritation, he followed Dean, who’d already made it a hundred yards in.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you fucking idiot?” he hissed after he caught up. “We’re unarmed and probably about to just walk into this vamp’s hideout!”

Dean tilted his head, considering something. “Aww, you’re worried, Sammy, that’s cute. I knew you still loved me!” Sam rolled his eyes but took note of the fact that Dean looked almost glad that Sam still cared. The idiot didn’t think that, just because Sam wouldn’t get it on with him, he’d stopped loving the dumbass? Dean continued, “Nah, we won’t walk in. Soon as we see a house with a panel van nearby, we’ll scram. But I don’t want to come barging in, machetes at the ready, to find some hick family who doesn’t know how to replace barbed wire.” He sped up and Sam growled to himself, lengthening his stride.

This couldn’t end well. There was no way this could end well. No ranch family would leave their fencing that fucked up. They’d be losing cattle by the hour. Not to mention the ease with which anyone with an ATV could get in and scare off all their cattle at once. No, no ranching family had lived here for years, and it was obvious. Those tracks were most likely (almost certainly, to be honest, Sam thought privately) the tracks from the vamp’s panel van, which means they were almost certainly walking straight into its hands, completely unarmed.

He thought back to those mirrors. Man, he wished there’d been a better way, because this luck sucked.

Dean caught his attention with a raised hand and their signal for utter silence. Sam held his breath and looked to where Dean was pointing. Sure enough: a dilapidated farmhouse with a panel van parked off to the side. He leveled his “ _I told you so, jerk_ ” face at Dean, who rolled his eyes and grinned manically. Sam narrowed his eyes and jerked his head back the way they came, and Dean nodded grudgingly and turned around, doing his best to make a minimum of noise.

Hopefully, the vamp was either too busy (the thought made Sam sick, but it was true) or it’d think they were just curious deer.

They made it back to the car without incident, trading looks the whole way. Sam glared every so often because Dean refused to acknowledge that he’d just taken such a stupid risk that even Cas would give him the disappointed look. He loved the asshole but, really, suicidally stupid moves had stopped being cool back during the first apocalypse. Dean just grinned in response, but Sam could see the glee that they’d found the vamp and something else. Was that regret? No, it couldn’t be. What would Dean regret?

Dean started the Impala and Sam dropped into the passenger seat. They drove away in uncomfortable silence. Sam didn’t know what he’d done, but he’d obviously done something. Fuck. His. Luck.

Dean drove them about five miles away before pulling off the road again. He turned to Sam and asked, “So, what do you think? Intel or ambush now, while it’s light?”

Sam weighed the options, knowing Dean had already done the same. On one hand, without intel they’d be walking into the house blind. Who knows what the floorplan was, where the vamp could be hiding. On the other hand, that information would be nearly impossible to find, considering the utter lack of realtors nearby, and waiting would leave the victim weaker and could invite the vamp to realize that it wasn’t two deer that had been sniffing around.

He sighed and said, “Now. It’s our best chance at getting the vic out alive and surprising the vamp.” Dean pulled a U-turn and headed back toward the farmhouse. “Dean,” Sam added, “We need a plan, okay? I can’t let you charge in headfirst. It fucking scares me every time.”

Dean quirked a grin at him, but saw how serious he was. “Okay, fine, geez, Samantha. What do you have in mind?”

“I go in front–”

“Oh, hell, no, you are not being the bait–”

“Dean will you _listen_ to me? Look, I go in front and distract the vamp. We both carry machetes _and_ guns with dead man’s blood bullets. I stocked the trunk up after that hunt in Wyoming. That way I don’t have to get in close.” Dean huffed but subsided, and Sam counted it as a victory. “Look, while I’m making a ton of noise, you slip in the back. If you can find a way to mask your scent on this short notice, do it. Find the vic and get her out. If I find her first, I’ll yell.” Dean nodded. “Whoever kills the vamp kills the vamp. Don’t be an idiot, okay? Don’t. I can handle this, we’ve done this how many times now?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever. Sounds good.” Sam could hear the impressed tone hidden in the dismissiveness, though, so he wasn’t worried. Dean would hopefully follow the plan.

Hopefully.

* * *

 

The house was dead silent as Sam strolled toward the front door. Dean had peeled off a hundred yards back to go around the long way and find something to mask his scent. When Sam pulled on the front door, it groaned. Loudly. Sam was glad that he was supposed to be making a lot of noise; otherwise, he would’ve been sunk. He didn’t hear any movement from inside the house, but he knew from experience how silent a vampire could be. He brought his gun up, the machete hanging off his belt, and shouted, “FBI! I know you’re in there! Come out with your hands up!”

He hoped like hell Dean was looking for the vic. Because there was no way he’d find her like this.

Except he did. The vampire, against al his expectations, didn’t come out with its fangs bared. Instead, Sam cleared three rooms before he stumbled into the one the vampire had been using to hold its victim.

He wasn’t expecting it, so he didn’t get a shot off until the vampire ducked and rolled away from the victim. Sam caught a glimpse of metal in its hand and cursed loudly, hoping that the sound would draw Dean to him. He dodged a shot fired by the vampire but found himself backed into a corner, his machete pinned between his hip and the wall and his gun at his side. The vampire raised its gun and Sam froze. He had to wait for an opening; trying to shoot now would get him shot before he could raise his gun.

The vampire noticed his predicament and straightened, laughing. Sam noticed that it was female, and that its mouth was stained red. The vic’s face was too pale, and red puncture marks dotted her neck and shoulders, bared by her halter top. He grimaced and hoped that they weren’t too late.

His attention was drawn back to the vampire when she started talking. “What a useless hunter!” she cackled. “Even the newbies know guns won’t do shit against me!” She laughed some more, but her finger never left the trigger of her gun and Sam didn’t have a good shot. As much as he hated to admit it, considering what they’d been fighting over for the last week, he’d need Dean’s help to get out of this unless the vampire completely lost focus. Then, as the vampire took a deep breath to recover from her laughing fit, her face froze. She sniffed again, deeply, her nostrils flaring.

“Oh, you naught, naughty boy,” she purred. “I can _smell_ your brother on you. You hunters get more depraved by the day. What do you let him do to you? Hmm? You _freak_ , I bet you let him…” Sam raised his gun slightly, watching the vampire’s trigger finger slip away from the trigger as she taunted him. He’d heard worse, honestly; it didn’t bother him.

Then Dean burst through the door in a cloud of lavender scented air, with a few twigs of lavender stuck to his jacket. He raised his machete and growled, “Bitch, you can shut the _hell_ up!”

Sam growled to himself as the vampire whirled in surprise, her gun raised and ready again. Goddammit, so close to getting her to relax. Before she could fire at Dean, he raised his own gun and emptied the magazine into her back. She twitched and fell, and Dean took her head.

The vic twitched and made a gurgled sound of shock, and Sam realized that she’d woken up sometime in the middle of the whole mess. He resolved to _talk_ to Dean later, but also to thank him. “Hey, hey,” he soothed the vic, “It’s okay, she’s dead, you’re okay. What’s your name?”

The vic whispered, “Chelsea,” hoarsely.

“Okay, Chelsea,” Sam replied, “We’re gonna get you out of here. I’m Sam, that’s my brother Dean. C’mon,” he grunted as he levered her upright. Dean took her other side and Sam continued, “Let’s get you to a hospital.”

She whimpered in pain and Sam tried to bend down so that he was straining her shoulder less. Sometimes he really hated being so tall; it made supporting people less than six feet tall (aka people who are not Dean) difficult.

He sniffed the air. His nose hadn’t been fooling him; Dean really did smell like he’d rolled in a lavender bush. “Lavender, Dean, really?” he teased.

Dean huffed, “It was either that or old horse shit, Sammy, be glad I went for the lavender.”

Sam made a face and Chelsea giggled a little hysterically. “Oh god, that was real, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“Yep,” Dean said nonchalantly. “It’s all real. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, everything that goes bump in the night.”

“Dean!” Sam hissed as Chelsea sagged, looking even more pale. “Chill!”

“What, she needs to know!” Dean returned. “At least this way she knows she’s not crazy!”

Sam huffed. Fine. But if she passed out from the shock on top of the blood loss, he was making Dean carry her.

They barely made it back to the Impala without Chelsea collapsing. Sam was sure that her didn’t imagine her whispered prayer as soon as she dropped into the backseat. He slid into the passenger side as Dean started the car and got the door closed just as Dean peeled out with screeching tires.

“Whoa, Dean, she’s awake, it’s not an emergency yet,” Sam cautioned. Dean’s eyes flickered over to him, but he didn’t get a response. “Okay, hey, sure,” Sam said, “Let’s get her to a hospital.” He turned back to Chelsea, asking “Hey, so do you know what to say to the cops?”

She laughed a little hysterically, but she wasn’t screaming or crying, so Sam was impressed. (He was sure she’d have at least passed out in shock by now. Judging from the number of bite wounds, the vampire hadn’t been shy about feeding often.) Chelsea stammered, “It-It’s not like I can just, like, say, _‘Hey, sir, no worries, it was a vampire but these two dudes totally killed it, it’s all good!’_. I-I mean, that would get me committed at best, so, uh, I dunno…” She trailed off, staring out the window.

“Chelsea?” Sam asked gently.

She started. “Sorry, sorry! I drifted a bit.” She giggled under her breath. “I, I don’t know. How do you do it?”

Sam huffed a laugh. How did they do it? That was the point. “We, uh, we don’t, really,” he answered. “We just kinda keep moving.”

“Oh.” She looked at him. “I didn’t – that doesn’t work for me, I guess. I mean, I have to have some explanation for – for all this.” She gestured to her throat and shoulders, covered in barely-scabbed bite marks that were _obviously_ bite marks.

Sam grimaced. He admitted it, this was why being always on the move was easy. If someone noticed some weird injury, you could always be gone the next day. Chelsea didn’t have that luxury. “You could always say the person who abducted you was a pervert,” he suggested. “Or some kind of serial killer. If the cops look harder, there’s a trail of bodies from the North Dakota border to you, and maybe further south than that. We got to you before, well, um…”

“Before the vamp decided you were used up and dumped you in a ditch like trash,” Dean interjected over Sam’s glare. Really, Dean? You had to say that. Sam rolled his eyes but tried to soften his face when he saw the deer-in-headlights look Chelsea had.

“Look, it’s not going to happen now, you’re safe,” he soothed. “We killed the vampire.”

She shivered, saying, “But what if another one sees my neck and…”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Dean stated loudly. “We got protections for you. All you need to do is carry a sigil in your wallet, in your pocket, wherever you put it that you’ll never leave it. And maybe put it somewhere inconspicuous around your doors, too. We’ll draw it out for you. In fact, Sam, do you know that off the top of your head?”

Sam squinted, trying to remember. “Not exactly,” he allowed. “And this is one of those that needs to be exact.”

Chelsea cut in, asking, “Wait, sigil? Those work?”

Dean almost turned around before Sam cleared his throat and tilted his head toward the road. Rolling his eyes, he focused forward but asked in disbelief, “You know about them?”

She shrugged awkwardly, her shoulders obviously hurting. “I mean, I went through a witch phase a couple of years ago. You know, put a few sigils around the house, try to call a familiar. It didn’t work, and then I almost burned the house down trying to charge a sigil for mental strength.”

Sam stared. He hadn’t met anyone who’d dabbled in witchcraft – the benevolent kind, not the demonic kind – since Stanford. Dean had talked about meeting one a couple of years back, when they’re split (a time he tried to forget), but didn’t say what she told him. But meeting white witches, as he called them (he’s pretty sure that’s not what they call themselves, but he needed some way to distinguish them), was always a fun experience and he always came away having learned something. “Huh,” Sam said. “We haven’t met many witches that exercise that kind of power. I mean, we have met a few, but the demonically-powered ones tend to kill people and, well, draw our attention. We tend to meet white witches – that’s what we call you, I guess – just at random. They have some goods sigils. I mean. Are you sure the sigils didn’t work?”

“Sam,” Dean said, “Not the point. Geek later.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but pulled out his laptop, plugged in the satellite internet stick, and pulled up the sigil. They didn’t exactly _have_ a later. As soon as they dropped Chelsea off, he knew that they were going to haul ass out of North Dakota. After all, two tall white men dressed like hicks, bringing in an injured younger white woman? There was no way assumptions wouldn’t be made, and he and Dean couldn’t take the risk of someone finding their fingerprints on an old FBI database after taking them in for questioning.

“Whatever, Dean,” he said. “Look, Chelsea, I’m not going to lie, the sigils will help. Me and Dean actually have tattoos that prevent possession, and if you’re not against it you can get this tattooed.” He showed her the sigil, drawing it on a piece of paper he’d ripped out of the back of John’s journal. “I’m going to give you this now. You don’t need to charge it consciously; it’s not that kind of magic. It’s more … I don’t know how to describe it. I guess the best way is to say that the symbol will pull power from the surroundings and only release it when it’s needed.”

Chelsea took the piece of paper, thanking him quietly, still looking shell-shocked. Sam quietly thanked any benevolent deity he knew that they were almost to the hospital. Talking to her had helped, but she needed medical care that they couldn’t adequately provide. Sure, they could stitch her up with a needle and stolen surgical thread, but it’d leave scars that she’d never be able to get rid of. (Sam knew from experience.) She deserved to at least go to a hospital, where they had glues and staples and all sorts of things to keep the scarring to a minimum.

“We almost there, Dean?” he asked, turning around and looking around. They were rolling into Grand Forks, and a highway sign pointed them toward the hospital 2 miles away. “Yeah, okay, good. What’s the plan?”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Well, we can’t put our faces on the cameras, to be honest. People remember the weirdest shit, and those Leviathans made a damn impact. So I guess I go in – don’t you dare argue, you’re the Sasquatch here, if your hair wasn’t so damn long it’d be okay but that’s a major defining feature. Anyway, I go in, wearing that ballcap and maybe a bulky coat, try to look bigger. Do we still have those glasses?” Sam nodded, seeing where it was going. Dean was right; wearing glasses could transform your face. Dean continued, “Awesome. Okay, so I go in with the cap, glasses, and coat, yelling for a nurse. Chelsea, I’ll be dragging you a bit, so try to look limp and in pain. That’ll get a faster reaction. I’ll answer any questions the nurse has and then get the hell out of there before the cops show.”

She looked a little shocked at what all they were doing, but she seemed to go along with it. Sam sighed as she timidly raised her hand. “Chelsea, it’s okay, you can ask questions. What do you want to know?”

“Um, why – why do you need to do that? I mean, it’s not like you’re wanted criminals … right?” The look on his face must have given him away, because she blanched and shoved herself back into the seat. “Wait, you _are_?” she shrieked. “What the – why the – who –”

Sam tried to calm her down. He raised his hands, showing that he didn’t have anything in his hands. (He wasn’t going to mention the gun still in his pants, or the one in Dean’s that was actually loaded.) Instead, she started hyperventilating. “Oh shit, oh shit,” he hissed.

“Chelsea!” Dean barked. “Look, we _aren’t_ the bad guys. Sure, we’re wanted for some stuff.” Sam had to snort because, wow, way to play down the “society thought we were serial killers for a couple of years” thing. Dean bulldozed over him, saying, “But! Think about what we do. C’mon, Chelsea, can you see how that’d confuse some people who don’t believe in the things that go bump in the dark? I mean, if you’d walked in on me beheading that vampire _without knowing she was a vampire_ , would you have let it go?”

Chelsea was still breathing hard, but her stiff stance had relaxed a little. “I’d – um – I’d have, I guess, called the cops?” she offered.

Sam cut in before Dean could continue. They were almost to the hospital; they didn’t have time for this. “And that’s exactly what’s happened to us more than once. People walk in on us taking out monsters – vampires, werewolves, you name and we’ve probably seen it – and don’t see the monster. So we get arrested on suspicion of murder of varying degrees, assault, battery, arson … hell, grave desecration, too, because to dispel a vengeful spirit you salt and burn the bones. And, well, that’s not something you can brush under the rug. You tend to be on all sorts of lists, and when there’s a hit the feds are trying to hunt you across the nation.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding rather small. “So…you’re not actually serial killers?”

“Um…no,” Sam replied, trying not to remember the year of hallucinations and Leviathans around every corner. “No, _we_ aren’t serial killers.”

Chelsea sighed. “Oh – okay, then. So, then, Dean – that’s your name, right? – you’re going to take me in to the hospital, and I just have to act like a damsel in great distress, right?”

“Exactly,” Dean agreed. “As long as you can look pitiful and injured – which shouldn’t be too hard, considering how torn up that _fucking_ vamp left you – then we should be golden. Maybe mention that it was just me, not Sam, and that I definitely _didn’t_ drive the black, mint-condition ’67 Impala that pulled up in front of the hospital. Because my baby’s another thing that’ll peg us. Unfortunately.” Dean grimaced and Sam snorted. Sometimes he can’t believe how attached his brother is to his car. (And then he remembers how attached Dean is to anything he loves, including him, and corrects himself. He could _totally_ believe it.)

“Right, okay, I can do this. I hope,” Chelsea said. Just then, Dean turned a corner and the hospital was on the right.

Dean pulled sedately into a parking spot, trying not to attract attention to the car they arrived in. (Security cameras would make that moot, anyway, but hopefully it’d go convincingly enough that no one would think to look.) “Showtime,” he grunted, pulling himself out of the car and walking around Chelsea’s door. Sam tried to make himself look small.

Dean took a couple of seconds at the trunk to pull out the disguise they’d decided on, and then he set off at a quick limp, already supporting a lot of Chelsea’s weight, it seemed. She was doing a great job at looking helpless; if Sam didn’t know any better, he’d be worrying about a blood transfusion, because she looked on the verge of passing out from the back. Dean yelled for a nurse every couple of seconds, putting just enough panic into his voice that someone came rushing out of the lobby, holding the door for them. (It was automatic, but it was a sweet thought.) Sam watched as Chelsea was laid on a gurney wheeled by a harried-looking nurse and taken back. Dean was cornered by the woman who had been manning the lobby, and who’d held the door for him. He hoped Dean would talk quick, and not come up with something too hard to prove. They couldn’t afford to stay here long; someone had likely already called or was seriously thinking about calling the cops.

Finally, just as he heard sirens start up in the distance, Dean managed to somehow worm his way away from the hospital employee and make his way out the door. Sam had no idea how he’d managed it, but hopefully the cap and glasses would keep the employee from describing a person looking anything like the Winchesters. (Or, if they get really lucky, the cops will accept Chelsea’s testimony that they’d only helped and leave it.) (Who was he kidding, they still had ages of bad luck left to work through. Time to go to ground.)

Dean strolled casually over to the Impala before shoving himself into the car, peeling off his various disguises, cranking the car, and peeling out quickly – but without burning rubber – before the cops pulled in. Sam did his best to look miserably sick as a cop car pulled into the hospital, the driver’s partner inspecting them. Apparently they didn’t look too suspicious – or they were looking for one man, not two – because they made it away from the hospital without police pursuit.

They both knew that luck wouldn’t hold. Dean glanced over at him, and when he nodded, Dean whooped and punched the gas. Sam grinned and held on for dear life as Dean shot towards the freeway, headed south towards Kansas. Toward the Bunker.

* * *

 

Sam didn’t mention the debacle with the vampire until two days later, when they’d finally decided to stop running. They’d crossed two state lines at that point, and they were still sore all over from sleeping in the car those nights. They’d bought a room at a motel the first night to wash off, but left as soon as they had a change of clothes on their backs. They’d been living on fast food and rough sleep, and Sam felt like utter _shit_.

Dean had been giving him these _looks_ the whole time, but neither of them said anything except what was necessary. (“Burger or chicken?” “Chicken. No fries. Unsweet tea.” “Got it.”) Sam figured that it’d eventually come out in a really ugly way, but for now it was just festering.

He blinked when Dean peeled off the state highway onto a farm to market road. He blinked again when Dean pulled into an empty field and stopped the car.

“Look, Sam,” Dean said quietly, and Sam tried not to hear the wounded undertone. “Can we just … sit? For a while?”

Sam nodded, too choked up to say anything. He got out of the car and let Dean spread a blanket on the ground. They both sat down and looked up. The night sky hung above them, stars shining gently in the sky.

Dean sighed. “Man, I missed this,” he mused quietly. “I wish we did this more often.” Sam glanced over, and noticed that Dean was staring stolidly at the sky.

Well, if that was how they were doing this, he’d go along. “Me too,” he agreed even more quietly.

They sat in silence for a while, staring at the stars, feeling each other’s heat at their sides, reveling in the knowledge that they were both _there_.

Sam sighed. “Everything just seems so much smaller out here.”

There was a long silence, almost like Dean was expecting him to jump right into criticizing him. Sam wondered how they’d gotten to this point. He realized that he was complicit in this, in making Dean feel like he couldn’t just talk to him. He wondered how long Dean had been trying to get through, trying to figure out the mess they’d made of this.

“Yeah, I hear ya, Sammy,” Dean finally said quietly. Sam turned to look at him, expecting Dean to be looking at him, but instead Dean was still focused on the sky. It was so unlike him, really.

Normally Sam was the one wondering at the cosmos while Dean watched him, smiling at his awe. Now it was all wrong. Dean stared quietly at the sky while Sam stared quietly at Dean’s profile.

Sam looked back up, trying to find some kind of answer in the stars. Instead, he found Orion, club raised. He wondered if that was how Dean felt, always fighting something, always on the ready, always prepared to attack … but not to flee, like Orion. To protect him. To do what their dad had told him, ordered him to do.

He sighed. “Dean,” he said.

“Yeah, Sammy?”

“I’m…look, I’m sorry, ok? I get it, I guess is what I’m saying.” Sam made sure not to look over to see what was certainly a look of triumph of Dean’s face. (Except he glanced over once and saw that Dean looked gobsmacked, and wondered if he really understood Dean behind all the shit he put up as a front. He always though he had, but that look spoke volumes that he’d never have predicted.)

“Sammy?” Dean asked, and Sam _almost_ looked over to hug him, because he sounded so confused and lost, like Sam had taken any conversation he’d expected and tilted them on their head.

Sam shrugged, feeling his shoulder rub against Dean’s. “I dunno, I guess I thought you always jumping in front of me was you trying to say that I couldn’t. That I was, I dunno, weaker than you or something.”

Dean choked out, “Sammy, _no_ ,” beside him and Sam made sure not to look over because he needed to finish this thought.

“I get it, now, though. You just want to keep me safe, man, I get that.” He paused and drew in a huge breath. “But, dude, you have to understand something: I feel the same way about you, okay? _I want to protect you too_. It’s a two-way thing. Not just the protecting thing, though, but the … thing we have going. Our relationship. Okay?” Sam soldiered forward, feeling Dean stiffen at his side. “Look, all I’m asking is that you let me protect you, too. And that we actually, I dunno, _talk_ a little? Instead of you trying to use our relationship as a buffer from talking? Because, man, it’s not just sex, okay? Or…not for me, anyway.” He stopped and waited, waited for Dean to say something, anything – an agreement, a rebuke, a joke – in reply.

Dean’s hand on his cheek turned his face from Orion in the sky. “Sammy,” Dean hushed, eyes bright, “It’s not for me either. It’s not. I can’t be– I don’t– I’m sorry for makin’ you think it was.” Dean pulled his face to his chest and tucked his head over Sam’s, and Sam felt weirdly like a little kid again, protected and sheltered under Dean.

“ _Dean_ ,” he choked out, muffling it against Dean’s chest.

Dean pulled him back up so he could look into Sam’s eyes. They both ignored the wet spots on Dean’s shirt and the tracks down Dean’s cheeks. “Shh, Sammy,” Dean soothed.

Sam leaned in, watching Dean’s face. He didn’t think he was imagining the relief he saw there. When their lips touched, Sam closed his eyes and just let himself fall into the kiss.

They broke apart soon, faces flushed and eyes bright. “Can we sit here a while longer?” Sam asked tentatively.

Dean broke into a huge smile. “’Course, Sammy,” he said, “We can sit here as long as you want. I mean, until my ass starts hurting, but you know…”

Sam laughed. “Jerk,” he teased.

“Bitch,” Dean replied, smile back in place.

Sam figured they’d be coming back to this field sometime. He’d forgotten how calming it was to stare at the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a kudos or a comment if you liked it! <3


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